


Stop The World, I Want To Get On!

by hoodienanami



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Carnivals, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Origin Story, and also because I just rewatched The Producers and got super inspired, this fic exists because I wanted to write an origin story fic for my Eddie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 01:52:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15474885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoodienanami/pseuds/hoodienanami
Summary: For as long as he can remember, Edward had wanted to be somebody. He wanted to be important, admired, and respected. But he was rigging games at a carnival instead.





	Stop The World, I Want To Get On!

“So, weird question, but what did you wanna be when you grew up?”

Edward looks up from counting the money the last sucker who tried to play the ring toss had given him. The question hits him completely out of the blue and he isn’t sure how to answer.

“Uh,” is all he can manage to say before his coworker starts talking again.

“I’m just askin’ because you’re super young, and young smart guys usually don’t dream of being carnival game operators. No offence.”

His coworker- Jamie, is right. 19-year-old geniuses didn’t dream of being carnival game operators. But here he was, rigging games and eating expired cotton candy like a loser. At least his fancy green carnival outfit with the white pinstripes and hat looks good on him.

He thinks for a moment. There were a lot of things he wanted to be when he was a kid. Like a video game developer, or a puzzle maker, or an inventor, or a movie star.

There was something all of those dreams had in common besides them still residing deep inside him.

In those dreams, Edward was famous. Not just famous, _important_.

In those dreams, he was someone who people looked up to, fawned over, complimented endlessly. In those dreams no one yelled at him, or treated him like trash, or hit him. They all respected him. He had money and his genius was appreciated.

Sure, those dreams had been buried under layers of being told he could never achieve them and his own self doubt and his knowledge of how the world works. It was a one in a million chance for him to get famous, but he still found himself wishfully imagining what it would be like.

His name in shining lights as a movie star. A company with his name on it and hundreds of awards as an inventor or game developer. The thought of the attention and adoration made him grin just thinking of it.

Jamie was looking at him weird. His sudden day dreaming must be showing clearly on his face. Edward put the money he was still holding into the cash register, trying to avoid the look Jamie was giving him. Jamie couldn’t read his mind but it felt like he could. He knew that clinging to those dreams was childish, but he didn’t want other people thinking he was childish for it as well.  

“I guess I just always wanted to be famous.” Edward shrugs his shoulders like he gave up on those dreams a long time ago. He sort of had, sort of hadn’t.

“I think you’d make a good famous person,” Jamie responds thoughtfully before walking off to bother someone else.

Edward watches him go before sitting down on his wobbly stool. He sighs loudly and looks off in the direction of Gotham. There’s a university there that he had always wanted to go to. Sure, the city it’s in is a hellhole, but The Gotham Institute of Technology is one of the best schools in the country. If he wanted to make at least one of his dreams come true, going there would be the best way to kick it off.

But that would never happen. He didn’t have enough money and he had no idea what his father had done with the application papers for all his scholarships. The idiot probably tore them up. There was no way he was getting into that school without money or a scholarship.

So, Edward returned to his fantasy of being famous, letting it take him away from the dirty carnival full of people who yelled at him and threw drinks at his head when they lost. It felt nice to close his eyes and get away from his life.

Edward rested his head on his hand as he leaned his elbow on the side of the booth, eyes closed and smiling at the idea of his name on the front page of a newspaper. He could see the headlines now: ‘Edward Nygma breaks records once again!’

Suddenly, he was pulled away from his happiness by painful reality. His eyes opened as a group of drunk teenagers asked to play the ring toss game. He sighed, not wanting to do his awful job, but standing up and doing it anyway because he had to.  

When he was a kid that he thought he would amount to so much. Every single one of his teachers had told him that at some point or another. But here he was, his life amounting to nothing. He really had thought he was going to be somebody. But apparently that had been another childish fantasy.

He sadly set up the ring toss game and handed five rings to each of the teenagers. Once upon a time, not too long ago, he had been happy to have this job. It meant he would never have to crawl back home to his father. It had once made him smile and made him feel superior to other people for once. But now it just made him feel like a failure.

As he watched the group try to play, a thought came to him. If all he needed was money to get into the university, why didn’t he just _take_ it?

Bank accounts were easy to hack for a genius like him (he’d done it before) and he had memorized the code to the carnival owner’s safe. He could easily steal enough money to get himself into the school and then find a way to make more money (in a more honest way hopefully) so he could stay there until he got a Master’s degree.

And if they needed grades to go with that money, he had perfect ones. Unbelievably perfect ones. There was no way they wouldn’t let him in with a combination of money and proven intelligence.  

For the first time in years Edward felt a spark of hope for his future, for his life. He felt almost exactly like he did when he had formed his plan to leave home.

He stopped midway through picking a ring up off the floor. What the hell was he doing here? When he left home he could have done anything he wanted and yet he ended up here? He was wasting his time in a job that was beneath him, taking abuse from people he was smarter then. He knew he had to get out of there right now. He wasn’t going to waste another second of his precious life and intellect at a dirty carnival.

The teens had lost all of their rings and one of them was loudly accusing him of rigging the game. Edward had always tried to keep a calm demeanor when stuff like this happened. But not this time. Oh no, he was finally going to tell off someone who had the gall to yell at him.

He adjusts his green hat and smiles a wicked grin at the group in front of him. “I don’t care if you think the game was rigged. Do you know why? Because it was! And I quit! Take your money out of the register, I couldn’t care less.”  

With that, Edward opens the little gate that let him exit the booth and proudly walks off towards the carnival owner’s trailer, leaving the teens to attempt to get the money out of the register.

He approached the trailer with his head held high, a huge grin spread across his face. It felt so good to finally yell at someone instead of it being the other way around. And it felt even better to know that he had just taken the first steps to achieving at least one of his dreams.

He was finally going to make something of his life like he always knew he would.

“Look out world,” Edward said mostly to himself but also to the world at large, smile growing somehow wider. “Here comes Edward Nygma.”

**Author's Note:**

> This whole fic is very clearly a slightly subtle/slightly not subtle reference to The Producers and I'm not ashamed of that because I adore that movie. 
> 
> Mel Brooks musicals aside, ever since I came up with my own version of Eddie I've wanted to write an origin story fic for him. This isn't exactly a full origin story seeing as he doesn't become The Riddler by the end, but it's the beginning of one. Maybe I'll write the rest of it one day.


End file.
